The President Intervenes for Chinese Merchants

The message received from the President today urges transmission of the correspondence between the Secretary of State and the Chinese Minister regarding the treaty rights of Chinese subjects. The President says that cases of individual hardship, beyond the power of the executive to remedy, have occurred in the application of the Chinese acts, which are due to the ambiguous and defective provisions of the law of Congress. He calls the serious attention of Congress to the circumstance that the statute makes no provision whatever for the numerous classes of Chinese persons who, retaining Chinese citizenship in some countries other than China, come from such countries to the United States. These merchants, he says, have trading operations of magnitude throughout the world. They do not become citizens of a country where they temporarily reside and trade. They continue to be subjects of China, and to these the explicit exemption of the treaty applies. Yet, if such subject is the head of a mercantile house at Hongkong, or Yokohama, or Honolulu, or Havana, or Colon, he is met with the requirement that he must produce a certificate in prescribed form in the English language signed by the Chinese Government.